Sunday, May 29, 2011

Freud’s Slip

﻿

Freud

Psychoanalysis and Freudianism have taken many blows in the past 30 years or so. All of which have steadily worn out Freud’s welcome in scientific circles. Certainly in most Psychology departments in universities Freudianism as science is not taken seriously. In fact Freudianism seems to be taken much more seriously by literary critics as a way to analyse literature than by psychologists. All of this is ignored by Freudians who living and working in a hermetically intellectually sealed environment ignore all this while the scientific foundations of Freudianism wither away to reveal nothing.1

Saturday, May 21, 2011

Diffusionistic Fantasies

Part VI

Prescott’s Good Sense

﻿

William H. Prescott

William H. Prescott, was a noted American Historian. Today he is best known for his massive History of the Conquest of Mexico and his History of the Conquest of Peru.1 Both still in print and often published together as a single volume.

Prescott who lived 1796-1859 C.E., did not have available to him the vast corpus of resources and findings that would help a modern scholar do a book about the conquest of Mexico and Peru. He instead had to rely on the limited, and it was limited, first hand accounts, further he had to rely on the limited ethnographic and to the extent there was any archaeological data that was available concerning the indigenous civilizations of the New World. His History of the Conquest of Mexico was published in 1843 and his History of the Conquest of Peru in 1847. Although Prescott did visit various Spanish archives he never did visit either Mexico or Peru.

Further given the limited nature of researches into the indigenous civilizations there flourished a veritable industry of fantasy concerning these cultures. This makes Prescott’s achievement even more remarkable.

Prescott wrote a short essay in his Appendix, Part I, called Origin of the Mexican Civilization – Analogies With the Old World.2 This essay despite more than a century and a half since it was written merits re-reading especially by those who still take hyper-diffusionism seriously.

Sunday, May 15, 2011

A Thing of Beauty

is a Wonder to Behold

Snow Leopards

Below﻿ are some pictures and a few paintings of an animal that is so beautiful and handsome has to be magical. I have found that just looking at these wonderful pictures of this animal restores my spirits, soothes the soul and restores my peace of mind. Just when you think the world is truly terrible place with so much ugliness it is good to know that there is this almost unearthly creature on it. In some respects contemplating this creature is better than prozac.

Perhaps some other time I will talk about this creature some more. Right now however just look at these pictures and be awed.

Sunday, May 08, 2011

When you consider the cultural genocide of Native Americans, the enslavement of blacks, and the relocation of Japanese Americans during World War Two, how can you have such a positive view of America?

Ayn Rand replied:

I don’t care to discuss the alleged complaints American Indians have against this country.I believe, with good reason, the most unsympathetic Hollywood portrayal of Indians and what they did to the white man. They had no right to a country merely because they were born here and then acted like savages. The white man did not conquer this country. And you are a racist if you object, because it means you believe that certain men are entitled to something because of their race. You believe that if someone is born in a magnificent country and doesn’t know what to do with it, he still has a property right to it. He does not.

Since the Indians did not have the concept of property or property rights – they didn’t have a settled society, they had predominantly nomadic tribal ‘cultures’ – they didn’t have rights to the land, and there was no reason for anyone to grant them rights that they had not conceived of and were not using. It’s wrong to attack a country that respects (or even tries to respect) individual rights. If you do, you’re an aggressor and are morally wrong. But if a ‘country’ does not protect rights – if a group of tribesmen are the slaves of their tribal chief – why should you respect the ‘rights’ that they don’t have or respect?

The same is true for a dictatorship. The citizens in it have individual rights, but the country has no rights and so anyone has the right to invade it, because rights are not recognized in that country; and no individual or country can have its cake and eat it too – that is, you can’t claim one should respect the ‘rights’ of Indians, when they had no concept of rights and no respect for rights.

But let’s suppose they were all beautifully innocent savages – which they certainly were not. What were they fighting for, in opposing the white man on this continent? For their wish to continue a primitive existence; for their ‘right’ to keep a part of the earth untouched – to keep everybody out so they could live like animals or cavemen?

Any European who brought with him an element of civilization had the right to take over this continent, and it’s great that some of them did.

...

As a principle, one should respect the sanctity of a contract among individuals. But I oppose applying contract law to American Indians. When a group of people or a nation does not respect individual rights, it cannot claim any rights whatsoever. The Indians were savages, with ghastly tribal rules and rituals, including the famous “Indian Torture.” Such tribes have no rights. Anyone had the right to come here and take whatever they could, because they would be dealing with savages as Indians dealt with each other – that is, by force. We owe nothing to Indians, except the memory of monstrous evils done by them.